Murder Below Montparnasse (10 page)

Too bad she’d forgotten her rain boots.

Cars and buses stalled as she hit road closures on the Left Bank. Bright road construction lights illumined crews excavating the sewer lines. Street after narrow street.

Frustrated, she detoured uphill, winding through the Latin Quarter, then zigzagging across to the south of Paris, former countryside squeezed between wall fortifications now demolished; past the old Observatoire, two-story houses, remnants of prewar factories leaving an urban patchwork.

Clouds scudded over the slanted rooftops, the chimney pots like pepper shakers over the grilled balconies. Avenues led to tree-lined lanes in this neighborhood, fronting hidden village-like pockets of what her grandfather called “the Parisians’ Paris.”

Her shoulders knotted in irritation. She didn’t have time for this scenic detour. Down wide Avenue du Général Leclerc,
through the nodding shadows cast by trees and clouds of chestnut pollen, past the Métro signs and the steps of l’Eglise Saint Pierre de Montrouge. Into a logjam. Horns blared. Protesters chanting “Stop the developers!” and wearing La Coalition armbands blocked part of rue d’Alésia, a street known to fashionistas for designer markdowns. Of course, a demonstration!

Great. No way she’d get through this banner-waving crowd on her Vespa. She downshifted and wove through protesters, desperate for a parking place. It took a good five minutes, then another five until on foot she turned into cobbled Villa d’Alésia. She paused where the narrow lane twisted to the right, past the two-story ateliers. Quiet. A world away from the street protest. Clouds above fretted the cobblestones with a patchwork of light.

Further on, she saw a woman rattling Yuri’s front gate. What was going on? Her stomach churned.

The older woman, in a mink coat over a purple jogging suit, gripped the grilled gate with one hand, beckoned her with the other. “
Viens
, Mademoiselle.”

“Something wrong? Is Monsieur Volodya all right?”

The woman, her dark penciled eyebrows at odds with her thinning brown hair, stared at Aimée, her mouth pursed. “All that yelling! Disturbed you too,
non?
”

Nonplussed, Aimée nodded.

“It’s overcast and you wear dark glasses?”

“The optometrist dilated my eyes this morning,” Aimée improvised, removing them and sticking them in her pocket. “But Yuri …?”

“Worried me, too,” the woman interrupted. “His water pipe’s flooding my wall and balcony again. A mess. Not the first time. But I’ve called.…”

The screech of a police car’s brakes coming to a halt in front of them drowned her out.

“You reported this, Madame?” asked the arriving
flic
,
motioning to his partner. Aimée wondered how they’d gotten through the congested demonstration.

“The commotion disturbed her too.” The woman gestured to Aimée. “All this yelling in the middle of the morning.”

The woman took Aimée for a neighbor. She kept talking, but the
flic
and his partner ignored her. With a sense of foreboding, Aimée followed them inside, her ankle boots sloshing in water. A flood all right.

“Monsieur?”

Over the blue-uniformed officer’s shoulders, Aimée saw Yuri bent over the gushing kitchen sink. His bloody arms were tied with a necktie to the faucet. She gasped. Rivulets of red-tinged water streamed onto the floor, eddying around her boots.

The first
flic
rushed to turn off the gushing taps. It took him several attempts to unknot the tie and hoist the old man down. Yuri’s blackened eyes were swollen shut, his face cut and bruised, his distended tongue thick and blue. His hair, plastered to his head, dripped water.

“Mon Dieu.”
Aimée’s hand flew to her mouth. “I’m too late.”

“What’s that, Mademoiselle?”

She shook her head. Instinct told her to keep her mouth shut. She wondered who’d tortured the old man in broad daylight.

Trying to piece it together didn’t stop her knees from knocking or the shivers from running up her spine. A familiar floral note—like
muguet
, lily of the valley—floated in the damp atelier. Her mother’s scent. Then a piercing scream—Aimée jumped as the woman in the mink coat appeared in the hallway, pointing, her face crinkled in horror. The
policier
called for backup, speaking into the microphone on his collar.

“Take your neighbor outside, will you?” he said. “We’ll talk to you both when backup arrives.”

Her unlicensed Beretta felt heavy in her bag. A good time to make herself scarce. Guiding the sobbing woman, Aimée
sloshed through the ebbing water. Just last night she’d sat here with Yuri. The vodka bottle and glasses were still on the table. But the card she’d left was gone.

Good God, what if the killer had taken it?

A broken chair, waterlogged books, and the armoire on its side showed evidence of a struggle. Had the thieves come back for the painting they hadn’t found last night? Or had her mother? And if her mother was involved in this, who was she involved with—Yuri, or whoever killed him?

Chilled, she pushed that thought away.

Only forty or fifty minutes had passed since she’d spoken with him. It made no sense. Last night his shock over his stolen painting had seemed genuine. Why torture him for a painting already stolen? Why had he called her and changed his mind? Saddened, she thought of her last image of Yuri Volodya, holding her card in his hands. Now she’d never get to ask him any of her questions.

“Just like in the war,” the woman said, her shoulders heaving.

Tense, Aimée put her arm around her. “What do you mean?”

“Standard torture by
les Boches
,” the woman said. “That’s how they got information from my brother. They tortured him in a bathtub on rue de Saussaies. Left him on our doorstep.”

Aimée only had a few minutes before backup arrived. She and her Beretta needed to be as far from here as possible. “Let me take you home, they’ll want to question us.”

She escorted the woman up her stairs. “You heard Yuri yelling?”

“But you heard it too,” she said.

“Bien sûr.”
Aimée needed to keep the woman talking. “It bothered my dog, but I couldn’t understand what they were saying.”

“Who could, unless you speak Russian.”

How did this add up? “You speak Russian, Madame?”

“
Les Russes
filled the quartier once,” she said. “A generation or two ago, I don’t remember.”

Lining the walls of the stairwell were faded amateurish watercolors of pastoral countryside and villages with canals. Painted long ago on holidays, she imagined.

“My brother painted those,” the woman said, noticing Aimée’s gaze.

Aimée nodded. “So talented, your brother.”

“Then, in 1943, that afternoon, gone.…” Her words trailed off.

Outside, Aimée heard car engines.

Both the woman’s brother and Yuri had been tortured in the same way. A link? Or maybe someone wanted it to appear that way? She’d think about that later. In the few minutes before the
flics
arrived she needed to pry information out of this woman. “Poor Yuri. He had so little.…”

“ ‘Sitting in sweet butter,’ Yuri said to me,” the woman interrupted, reaching the first-floor landing. She opened her door and hung up her mink coat. Warmth and the smell of apples drifted from inside this atelier, which was similar to Yuri’s. Aimée guided her toward a chair as the woman dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. “
Bien sûr
, his wife’s son, he’s been sniffing around. The type who wants the butter and the money to buy it.”

An old saying of her
grand-mère
’s. Aimée hadn’t heard it in years. She remembered Yuri’s comment on his daughter-in-law’s cement blinis.

“Mark my words, look to family,” the woman said. “That’s what those crime shows say.”

“What sweet butter?” Aimée fingered her bag’s leather strap. “Yuri won the lotto?”

The woman dabbed her eyes again. Shrugged.

A painting so valuable Yuri had been tortured for it. Did that make sense? Aimée needed to press. This woman might have more information, a crucial detail.

“
Mais
following his father’s funeral, he acted differently,” the woman said. “Didn’t you notice? After he visited the old Russian nursing home?”

A knock sounded on the door. The
flics
. Flustered, Aimée took a stab in the dark. “Ah, you mean that painting he inherited from his father,
non?
Seemed to worry him?”

“Not too much. Talked big after that, don’t you remember?” Her eyes narrowed. “Where do you live, eh? I haven’t seen you around.”

“Juste à côté,”
Aimée said. Time to get the hell out of here. “May I use the ladies’ before we talk to the
flics
, Madame?”

More knocking.

“End of the hall.”

Aimée found no window in the bathroom. Cursed under her breath. She peeked out the door. Saw the woman’s back. Tiptoed to the small kitchen and the back door, opened it to the dripping-wet balcony.

One floor down. She grabbed the metal balcony bars, let her legs dangle in the late morning air. Next door she saw Yuri’s lighted atelier through a tall window. She took a deep breath and dropped, landing in wet grass. Mud and grass caked her boot heels.

Great.

A walkway led through the small courtyard. She scanned the back building windows for neighbors. Lace panels covered many of the closed windows. Too cold and wet for hanging laundry. Satisfied no one was looking out, she passed through an old gate and scaled a cracked stone wall to land on mud. Again.

A damp, trampled rosemary bush lay in her path. The fragrance enveloped her.

Her view at the garden’s rear gave onto Yuri’s kitchen. She could crouch down undetected—but for how long? Arriving blue uniforms filled the atelier. At any moment they’d start taping off the apartment, spread into the garden.

Something wet and fragrant brushed her cheek. A broken sprig of rosemary stuck from the wall. Rosemary for remembrance, and she had so much to remember. Stalling, she picked up the rosemary and examined it. Wound around the stem was a bit of yellow grass. Straw? No, more like hay. She had a sudden intuition it was the murderer who had trampled this rosemary, perhaps coming over the wall the same way she just had. She stuck the hay-tangled sprig in her pocket.

Right now only one thing was clear: She had to find this painting Yuri was tortured for that somehow led to her mother. Saj was in the clear for the accident now, or would be once Serge filed his report. Yet Aimée couldn’t be sure he was safe until she knew who the Serb who’d tracked him down to the hospital had been. She couldn’t shake the feeling that the dead Serb and the missing painting were linked. Besides, even if they weren’t, she was caught up in this case now—she’d missed the old man’s call, and now he was dead. His five thousand francs sat in her bag. She couldn’t shake her feeling of guilt, not to mention her regret at losing her one link to her mother.

The neighbor’s window opened. A finger pointed. “She’s over there.…”

Aimée took off and didn’t hear the rest.

“W
E’VE BUILT THE
mainframe. Your job’s maintenance so we can go back in and tweak it. Anything you need, René.” Andy slapped him on the back, then followed up with a hug.
So California men like to hug
?

As if reading his mind, Andy laughed. “We’re not kissers, like you froggies. But we’re totally jazzed to have you as our CTO. Just remember, we need that back door for routine maintenance.” He hugged René again. “Anything you need, dude.”

Excited, René nodded. Dudes, cowboys—
alors
, this was the Wild West.

Andy peace-signed his way out.

Andy the long-haired CFO and Rob the investor angel were two of the most brilliant people René had ever met. Within five minutes of meeting them, he’d known there was no one like them in France. The company had algorithms a year ahead of any he’d seen. Their one problem was keeping people from getting in. His job: to make their security top-notch.

René cranked up his ergonomic chair at his new desk in what had been the car dealership’s assistant’s office. The room emanated fresh paint and glue from newly laid carpet. A leftover Buick Skylark calendar adorned the wall.

With his chief tech officer position came the company laptop, two desktop terminals, and keys to the former coffee room, which now housed the bank of computers. The beating heart of
their stock-trading search-engine start-up. His start-up, too—he owned shares.

René glowed inside. Their genius concept was perfectly timed to crest the oncoming wave of stock trading. He kept wanting to pinch himself.

A few more algorithms, and he’d complete the security firewall. A real beauty. He savored a challenge.

He rubbed his hands together at the keyboard.
Splat!
Warm liquid dripped from his cuff-linked sleeve. He’d knocked the cup of what they called “coffee” over.

Merde
.

By the time he reached the restroom, he’d figured out part of the code for the next algorithm in his head. But the big problem right now was the sink’s high faucet—out of his reach. Had they built this for giants?

Non
, just big Americans. He’d need a stool to reach it so he could wash off his stained, dripping sleeve. Hunting for anything to stand on, he ended up in the back storeroom. The cooling system whirred.

“He’s perfect. The mainframe security’s almost there.”

René stopped in his tracks. Someone was speaking of his work. Pride filled his chest. The voice spoke at intervals. Like a cell phone conversation.

“He’s brilliant but we won’t.…” Loud whirring drowned the rest. René’s gaze caught on a Pepsi crate. “He’s set up.…” More whirring. “… front running.” With all the background noise, he couldn’t recognize the voice. “The dwarf’s got no idea.”

René’s hands paused on the crate. What did that mean?

He walked through the storeroom, following the sound of a door shutting.
EXIT
. He opened the door, blinked into blinding sunlight to find the parking lot. He couldn’t see over the hoods but heard an engine start up. By the time he reached the middle of the lot, the car was gone.